Help! They sold me Windows 8!

[mclane]

on the mobiles win8 works very well. in fact it rescues nokias neck.

[Dr.Wael Deeb]

Thanks God for this thread as I was willing to buy a new i7 laptop for my 6 years old son with Windows 8....

An i7 laptop he will get but with windows 7 regards,
Dr.D

if you buy one with Windows 8 Pro you are usually allowed to downgrade to Windows 7 Pro, the .iso is downloadable directly from Microsoft and you should also get a useable product key from Microsoft. -> I sold lot's of computers and Notebooks this year but so far none with Windows 8. In my opinion Metro doesn't make any sense when you have mouse and keyboard and no touchscreen. It might be nice on tablets and phones, but so far I simply did see no sense in buying a tablet for myself. I do not see anything they would offer to me which I can't do with my notebook, my tv or my desktop pc. Same reason why I still do not own a smartphone.

Greets, Thomas

Thanks Thomas

So I am not the only guy on the planet that don't like and won't buy a smartphone......

well, I may buy soon one because I have some crazy App-ideas which may never return all the effort I might spent in them (at least not when we talk about money) but may be a lot of fun to work on... - But well, then I know why I've bought one...

In fact I am very sure that smartphones will survive the hype, there are definitely things which they might be useful for. But tablets ? What the hell should I do with a tablet ?

Greets, Thomas

I have a tablet and I do like it, but really I would have preferred more improvements and downsizing of laptops. The "net-books" were quite usable and actually fully functional computers. tablets and smartphones are crippled up version of note-book computers.

There is some advantage to touching the screen for some applications so it's not all just a downside - but to make a tablet or phone really usable you need a real keyboard.

All of this is just part of the dumbing down of society in my opinion, less typing, less reading, more pictures, more mindless eye-candy.

Exactly.........

[Laskos]

on the mobiles win8 works very well. in fact it rescues nokias neck.

Windows RT on ARM will go nowhere. One needs x86 smartphones with real Win 8 and full compatibility.

[mclane]

on the mobiles win8 works very well. in fact it rescues nokias neck.

Windows RT on ARM will go nowhere. One needs x86 smartphones with real Win 8 and full compatibility.

On a mobile ? Why ?

[mclane]

on the mobiles win8 works very well. in fact it rescues nokias neck.

Windows RT on ARM will go nowhere. One needs x86 smartphones with real Win 8 and full compatibility.

Nobody needs x86 Windows. Its a resource Waster, it blocks the machines with redundant jobs and tasks. Windows 8 on arm machines works well. Computer chess can be done on tablets and mobiles too in android. Windows x86 is for people living in the Stone Age. Having big and ineffective machines like dinosaurs. As ineffective btw. Like the iCga or hp.

[Laskos]

on the mobiles win8 works very well. in fact it rescues nokias neck.

Windows RT on ARM will go nowhere. One needs x86 smartphones with real Win 8 and full compatibility.

Nobody needs x86 Windows. Its a resource Waster, it blocks the machines with redundant jobs and tasks. Windows 8 on arm machines works well. Computer chess can be done on tablets and mobiles too in android. Windows x86 is for people living in the Stone Age. Having big and ineffective machines like dinosaurs. As ineffective btw. Like the iCga or hp.

AFAIK they have very few Metro applications for Windows RT on ARM. Then, its market share is tiny compared to Android or iOS, few people are working on RT applications. I prefer x86 phones with Windows 8 for the luxury of having PC applications running on it. I imagine having Mathematica, SPSS and all the chess software running on x86 phones with Windows 8, that would be awesome. Until then Windows RT is a dead duck.

[hgm]

Although Classic Shell made Windows 8 sort of usable, I still have one major problem:

In previous Windows versions the file explorer showed file name and type side by side in colums. But the column for the type seems to have disappeared. Which is sort of disastrous, because it means I also cannot sort by type, which makes the list view of most folders a total mess.

How can I get that column back?

(Oh, and there also is this nasty aspect that the right half of the window seems to be just a space waster, listing nothing more than the number of displayed files and a meaningless icon. Is there a way to suppress that?)

[Mike S.]

Right-click on a column title, and you can select from the major items, which one you want to have displayed. The bottom menu item gives even (much) more options.

As for the 2nd problem, I am not sure if I understand it correctly. Maybe it can be solved by selecting the view mode.

By right-clicking a folder in the folder tree (left), you can find a feature to force all subfolders to the same display configuration. I think the tab will be called "adapt" or "adjust" or something like that (sorry I have a german windows only).

P.S. I still don't understand the requirement for a "Classic Shell" or the like, because as mentioned before, one mouse click bottom-left (or [Windows]+D keys) brings up the classical desktop, and Windows 8 also stays there until you switch back. Am I really more flexible than dozens of chess programmers?

[AdminX]

I bought a nice new laptop today, with a 2.4 GHz i3 (2 cores, 4 HT, 3MB L3, 4GB DRAM, 350GB HD). But unfortunately it came with Windows 8.

How can I get a decent start menu? At the moment all I can get is a totally crappy page that does not fit the display, and lists every item in the menu tree as a bulky square, without any grouping. So after installing WinBoard, for instance, I get some 19 new tiles very far out of view.

Even more important, how do I start a command-prompt window?

I already do have a Cygwin prompt, but the ftp there does not seem to work. (I already had that problem in Windows 7, but there I could use Windows own ftp from the Windows command prompt.)

You can remove whatever start menu app you are now using, as today you will be able to get Windows 8.1 (Blue). It's a free update that should be available later today. This update brings back the Start Menu.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMG5LaWRQ_E

[Modern Times]

P.S. I still don't understand the requirement for a "Classic Shell" or the like, because as mentioned before, one mouse click bottom-left (or [Windows]+D keys) brings up the classical desktop, and Windows 8 also stays there until you switch back. Am I really more flexible than dozens of chess programmers?

I was just incredibly lazy, I installed Start8 intermediately without even trying to get used to the new product. I regret that now, but as Ted says, the 8.1 update will improve the desktop experience.